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Technology and TFM

Topic started by Padmanabhan Ganesan (@ client-116-48.bellatlantic.net) on Tue Aug 5 19:58:18 EDT 1997.
All times in EDT +9:30 for IST.

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Responses:

• Old responses
  
• From: pg (@ gate02.merck-medco.com) on: Thu Jun 11 09:41:45 EDT 1998
  
  Just to update :
  
  I bought a CD-RW drive for my PC. (Hewlett-Packard parallel port external model number 7200e. Price approx US$500 mail order). It can record CD-rewritable and create CD-recordable CDs. CR-RW blanks are expensive ($20-25 each) and these cannot be played back on regular CD-ROM drives or on audio CD players. But write-once CD-Rs can be played back on almost any CD-ROM drives and audio CD players.
  
  I have created about 5 CD-ROMs and about 20 audio CDs on my machine and the quality is excellent. For audio CDs it matches the source and I can play it on any CD player. CD-R blanks cost $0-$3 each depending on brand, mail-in rebate, quantity etc.
  
  
• From: Bharat (@ dsi.mids.com) on: Thu Jun 11 10:44:01 EDT 1998
  
  pg:
  
  If you estimate the average indian film song (Tamil/Hindi) to be five minutes long, how many songs can a CD hold? In that respect, is it a worthwhile investment? Thanks in advance for your answer.
  
  
• From: SRIkanth (@ 161.225.48.3) on: Thu Jun 11 10:58:24 EDT 1998
  
  HI Pg,
  I want to go for a CD-R can you tell me the brand etc./. Went around in Minneapolis to looking for it , It costs aroubd $399--499.
  There are many now.
  I want to record my tracks on this CD-R - One of my friend has this we made a Cd with 10 songs in MPEG3 . The sound quality is fantastic.,
  
  Guys ,
  Please let me know any techinical Q&A on Music instruments, samplers , recoders etc..
  I can elaborate..
  
  Srikanth
  
  
• From: pg (@ gate02.merck-medco.com) on: Thu Jun 11 11:38:34 EDT 1998
  
  There are various types of CD-R recorders on the market - Parallel port/IDE/SCSI & internal/external. SCSI is costlier as is external drives. My PC (Gateway 2000 - 200 Mhz Pentium Pro /64 MB RAM - no SCSI card) had no SCSI card so SCSI was ruled out. I did not want to open my machine; so internal was ruled out. The HP machine had recd good reviews on the newsgroups so I bought that.
  If your machine has a SCSI card, buy a SCSI drive - it performs better. If you are confident about installing an internal drive buy an internal drive(should not be too difficult). Internal drives are cheaper & perform better.
  
  My HP CD-RW drive is a 4x read / 2x write drive. So for a 74 minute CD it takes about 37 min to write the CD. My CD-R drive has a 1 MB buffer.
  
  The CD is created by 'burning' the CD - the chemical coating is burnt with a high-energy laser to create the pits. This is a non-reversible process (CD-R not CD-RW). So the transfer of data between the source (another CD drive/hard disk) should not be affected in any way. If it does the blank is wasted and you have a coaster for your coffee mugs !
  When I create a CD, I disable my screen saver/ power saver/ disable auto scandisk/defragmenter. I have not had any problems so far.
  
  For copying audio CDs, the CD-ROM should support DAE - digital audio extraction - which will convert the audio track to a .wav on your hard disk. Each minute of audio takes about 10 MB. For a 74 minute CD (the limit on CD-Rs), you need approx 750 MB of free space on your hard disk. My Mitsumi CD-R does DAE poorly, so I use my HP CD-RW drive for DAE and recording. About CD-RW, you have to format the blank which takes about 1/2 hour. After formatting it has about 600 MB of free space.
  
  Checkout
  http://www.pcconnection.com
  
  I bought my piece from them. The quality of the recordings will match the original.
  
  
  Other useful info sites :
  
  http://www.pcguide.com/ref/cd/cdr.htm
  http://www.enteract.com/~pcrowley/cdrdiag.html
  
  There are a lot of FAQs available on the net.
  
  Bharat :
  
  A blank CD-R holds 650 MB of data or 74 min of audio. Some pre-recorded CDs hold upto 80 min of audio; so if you try to copy them you will lose some tracks.
  
  For CD-ROMs I do a direct CD copy (my Mitsumi CD-ROM drive to CD-RW drive) - pretty fast. For audio CDs, I always extract the audio track to a .wav file, check the file for any noise and then record to the CD-R.
  
  You can even edit the audio .wav file with programs like CoolEdit (to remove noise/sfx etc).
  
  I am now in the process of converting my cassettes to CDs.
  
  
• From: srikanth (@ 161.225.48.3) on: Thu Jun 11 12:24:07 EDT 1998
  
  Hi Pg
  
  Thanks for the information , - I will get the CD-R by this week end!....
  
  
  Srikanth
  
  
• From: Thenraja Kaliappan (@ ttwd53.doas.state.ga.us) on: Thu Jun 11 13:42:26 EDT 1998
  
  Pg,
  Thanks a lot for detailed information. I have been reading a lot on this subject recently and was even thinking of reviving this thread.
  1. I would like to know if you could improve the sound quality of old songs in cassettes when you transfer them to CDs using the software.
  2. I have read if a CD-ROM is DAE compatible, you could directly write them to CD-R without saving in hard disk. Is that true?
  3. Can we use the headphone jack as audio-out from cassette player?
  Could you answer these questions from your experience.
  Thanks
  More information on this subject
  1. Newsgroups
  alt.cd-rom
  alt.comp.periphs.cdr
  2. www.zdnet.com/pcmag
  search for 'Personal Recording Studios'
  3. Lots of info at
  www.adaptec.com
  4. I have read
  * The best and most defect free CDRW IDE CDROMs for DAE are the Panasonic 24x CR585/7B and 32x CR586/8B
  * The best SCSI CDROMs for DAE are the Plextor 12, 12/20, and 14/32
  
  
• From: pg (@ gate02.merck-medco.com) on: Thu Jun 11 15:02:02 EDT 1998
  
  Hi Thenraja Kaliappan :
  
  1. Theoretically you can do it but this is not for the faint of heart. This is quite difficult to do. I have used CoolEdit. This loads the wav file and displays a graph. It can play the file and display on the graph what it is playing. You can stop, mark it and edit a section. This is a very laborious process.
  
  2.Again, you can do it but it is risky. Basically you are doing DAE on the fly. If the DAE slows down due to reading errors and the data flow is disrupted you can end up with a coaster. I do direct copying only with CD-ROMs, never with audio CDs.
  
  3. Yes. You connect the heaephone out to your AUX-in jacks on your audio card. Your audio card will convert the analog audio audio to a digital bitstream and the software will convert it to a wav file. The quality depends on how good your analog-to-digital converter on your audio card is.
  
  Plextor is supposed to one of the best; I don't know anything about Panasonic. Also Yamaha/Ricoh are also supposed to be very good. I am very happy with my HP recorder and hasn't given me a single problem to this day.
  
  
• From: srikanth (@ 161.225.48.3) on: Thu Jun 11 15:11:45 EDT 1998
  
  Hi,
  A techical problem . I have a error message in my windows when ever I do a OLE operation Scan using Wain_Dll or use Ms-Word...
  My systems hangs and the task manager reports "msgsrv32.exe is not responding". I have searched about this error on Inet- I could not get a solution - Microsoft says disable the power management - I did nothing much happened . I reinstalled windows twice -- but still the problem remains. Some one help help help me in this PLEASE!..
  (Ravi can you!)
  
  Srikanth
  
  
• From: Thenraja Kaliappan (@ ttwd53.doas.state.ga.us) on: Fri Jun 12 07:19:33 EDT 1998
  
  Thanks Pg.
  I need to get involved in the near future. Looks like - fun in the beginning but laborious in the long run. I would like to go for some rare old songs played in OLI, tape them and play them back to write on CD.
  
  
• From: pg (@ gate02.merck-medco.com) on: Fri Jun 12 11:05:47 EDT 1998
  
  There is a program called SoundForge which can supposedly remove noise automatically - assuming that the noise is a constant hum/hiss etc and is easily differentiable from the music. The program is expensive - about US$350, I think. No program will be able to remove discrete noise (like pops, clicks etc) automatically. These will have to be removed manually.
  
  
• From: Ravi (@ envy.cs.umass.edu) on: Fri Jun 12 12:41:54 EDT 1998
  
  srikanth: I am a unix guy and hence my knowledge of windows problems is just enough for me to avoid it like the plague. :-)
  
  
• From: Sridhar Seetharaman (@ 128.96.140.26) on: Fri Jun 12 14:12:37 EDT 1998
  
  How do you convert a song from an audio kaset to the wav format ? Is there a software which comes with HP CD-RW drive to do this ?
  
  
• From: Thenraja Kaliappan (@ msaunder.doas.state.ga.us) on: Wed Aug 5 12:15:04 EDT 1998
  
  Sridhar,
  You may use Windows 'Sound recorder' to convert a song in an audio tape to a WAV file. Connect your Sound output jack to PC audio card's LINE IN. If your cassette player does not have a 'audio out' jack, use headphone jack.
  
  I am not sure if the software with HP CD-RW, easy CD Creator Std Edition, has a utility to do it. But its Deluxe edition has 'CD Spin Doctor' which would do the same job.
  
  
• From: Srikanth (@ 206.139.13.154) on: Wed Aug 5 12:36:37 EDT 1998
  
  Hi Sridhar,
  
  Go for a software called CoolPro - This is wonderfull digital recording tool, we can record upto 64 digital tracks. (your sound card must have full-duplex capabilites.)
  
  I use this to record my neyar neram and all other RA programs.
  
  Take the lineout or speaker out from your audio system (or mixer or amp) and plug it in the computer instead of the microphone...
  you will be able to record,
  you can increase the input volume with the volume control or in the multimedia icon in the control panel.
  
  (call me for more info)
  Srikanth
  
  
  
  
• From: arvind (@ oxhp.com) on: Wed Aug 5 15:14:43 EDT 1998
  
  how do i convert my cassette to CD
  
  
• From: Rajaraman (@ 192.122.135.224) on: Wed Aug 5 21:37:37 EDT 1998
  
  Arvind,
  
  In singapore, there are quite a few guys who do this conversion for Sing$ 25. They also do
  VHS to VCD.
  
  
• From: arvind (@ nhv-ct6-01.ix.netcom.com) on: Wed Aug 5 21:40:40 EDT 1998
  
  Rajaraman
  
  Thanx for the info, i wanted to do that myself, i have over 250 cassettes(some of them have rare songs, i want to preserve them)
  
  how is the quality Cass to CD
  
  
• From: Thenraja Kaliappan (@ msaunder.doas.state.ga.us) on: Thu Aug 6 07:15:54 EDT 1998
  
  Arvind,
  Read previous postings by 'pg' in this thread. I will post my experiences soon on audio tape to CD.
  
  

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